ARROGANT SOB
Jake E. Lee says: “I was fu@king better looking and fu@king better playing” than Mick, “Nikki & Tommy wanted me in Motley Crue”
Blabbermouth — Jake E. Lee says that Nikki Sixx and Tommy Lee wanted him to replace Mick Mars in MÖTLEY CRÜE.
According to the former OZZY OSBOURNE guitarist, the CRÜE musicians approached him about possibly joining their group in the early 1980s, before he got the call to work with the BLACK SABBATH frontman.
Speaking to Tone-Talk, Lee recalled (see video below): “I quit RATT. I had nothing going on. I was going to MÖTLEY‘s fucking gigs… Nikki and Tommy wanted me in the band. They actually wanted me to replace Mick — which you can understand that. [I was] fucking better looking and fucking better playing. They wanted me to replace Mick. Mick‘s in-law or whatever was funding the band, so that didn’t happen. And there was [talk of MÖTLEY CRÜE] maybe [having] two guitar players, which even then, I was, like, ‘MÖTLEY CRÜE. Two guitar players. I don’t know about that.’ So, anyway, it kind of started with that. ‘Cause there was that thing going. Whether somebody denies it or not, that’s what started the rift between me and Mick.”
A couple of years later, MÖTLEY CRÜE ended up supporting Ozzy on a U.S. tour. “I’m not saying I had a big deal to do with it, but I remember Sharon [Osbourne] saying, ‘This MÖTLEY CRÜE. What do you think about [them] opening?'” Jake said. “I said, ‘Fucking MÖTLEY CRÜE. I think they’re gonna be the next big deal.’ So MÖTLEY CRÜE is opening for us now. At at one point, I’m out partying with… I think it was Tommy… It might have been Vince[Neil]. Who knows? Whoever Mick‘s roommate was.
We go back to the room, and Mick‘s in his pajamas and he’s very upset with us. It was with RATT too — I remember Robbin [Crosby] was there, Stephen [Pearcy] was there. Mick, being the old man, as everybody joked about [him], he made a complaint. I’m not sure what I said. I think just called him ‘the old man’ and [told him to] shut up. And he did look over at me and said, ‘At least I’m not a slant-eyed Japanese bastard.’ And I did not like that — did not like it. I hadn’t heard it, actually, since I was in grade school — the whole ‘slant-eyed Japanese’ thing. And it pissed me off. I walked over. I was gonna beat the fuck out of him. And it was Robbin Crosby, who was six-five, he came up to me, picked me and said, ‘C’mon, Jake. None of that shit matters.’ And he carried me out of the room.”
Listen to Jake E. Lee on Tone Talk (below) or read the full story at Blabbermouth
Motley Crue photo by Mark “Weiss Guy” Weiss
